It is well known to home owners and prospective buyers around the world that the elegance of a hardwood floor lends warmth and character to any room in a home. Wood's natural characteristics add depth to any room as well as a visual appearance that many other types of floors can only attempt to duplicate, with varying degrees of success. Due to an increasing demand for hardwood flooring, manufacturers are enhancing their ranges of woods and styles to meet the increased demand. Manufacturers are also offering woods having higher quality finishes and constructed using superior techniques. Homeowners now have available to them a vast array of wood species, colors and widths from which to choose. The classic hardwoods (such as red oak, white oak, maple and ash) remain as popular as ever, but now many manufacturers even offer exotic hardwood species that come from all over the World. Homeowners can better express their own personal decorating tastes with a more unique looking floor that comes from the use of exotic hardwoods. There has never been a more dizzying array of hardwood floors available than there are now, which often makes the choice of appropriate hardwood flooring very difficult for homeowners.
The most aesthetically pleasing and durable floor imaginable, however, can entail considerable expense owing to the costs of the wood itself, which may hamper the ability to achieve the finished product in a practical or economical way. Add to that the additional significant labor expenses stemming from the time required for undertaking the installation of the floor.
The traditional method of laying parquet floors entails the application of adhesive to a floor base or surface using a trowel and then placing the parquet panels on top of the adhesive in a desired pattern. While the method works to produce the desired floor, it is fraught with potential problems. One such problem is that by applying adhesive to the floor support, the craftsman runs the risk of finding a quantity of adhesive creeping into the tongue and groove joint between the parquet panels when they are pushed into place. The excess misplaced adhesive has the undesired effect of preventing the joints between parquet panels from being completely tight. This will effect some parquet patterns more than others, but for all patterns one can expect gaps to eventually appear between successively applied panels, marring the floor's appearance.
One remedy to the above-described problem is to apply the adhesive directly to the underside of the parquet panel instead of the floor base, and then proceeding with the placement of panels on the base. However, while the problem of adhesive creep has been addressed, there remain other problems in this manual labor-intensive process. A craftsman who applies adhesive to the rear face of each parquet element using a trowel or other suitable adhesive distributor faces an arduous and messy task. There is always the possibility of dripping adhesive from the trowel or spilling the supply container. Another problem is the likelihood that the adhesive will be exposed to the air for an undesirably long period of time, possibly causing it to increase in viscosity or even to dry. This can happen because the complete handling and placement of each element by the craftsman, from application of adhesive to mounting of the element in the proper position and retrieval of the next element, is time-consuming. Excessive time requirements for completing the job will in turn lead the cost of the work to rise prohibitively for the consumer. Further, excessive time works to the disadvantage of the floor layer, because he can take on fewer jobs and will earn less as a result.
Labor-saving adhesive applicator devices are known in the art. One such device is disclosed in PCT application publication number WO 99/56888, wherein each parquet element is pushed past a stationary adhesive applicator. Swedish patent number 503121 discloses a movable adhesive applicator for applying adhesive to a groove located along a longitudinal edge of the lowermost element in a stack of flooring elements. Norwegian patent number NO20034092 discloses an apparatus for applying an adhesive onto one face of a flat building element which also includes a movable adhesive applicator, and which retrieves the uppermost element from a single supply stack for application of adhesive.
The present invention fulfills a need in the art for a method which enables serial application of adhesive onto members of one or more wood stacks without the necessity of manually placing the members in position for application of adhesive, which will have the effect of making the process faster and safer. The present invention also fulfills a need in the art for a method and apparatus which will minimize or eliminate the cumbersome manual movement of successive supply stacks of elements to a position from which the next element can be placed in position for application of adhesive.